An unpaid City Council intern claimed she was axed after demanding she and her peers be paid $32 per hour — nearly twice the Big Apple’s current minimum wage.
Mina Farahmand, a legislative intern for Manhattan Councilman Harvey Epstein’s office, said she was given the boot Wednesday after she sent Council Speaker Julie Menin a petition signed by 32 of her peers seeking “a living wage,” City & State reported.
“I got fired from @NYCCouncil for organizing as an unpaid intern yesterday after I sent a petition to the Speaker Tuesday to pay all interns,” Farahmand said in an X post Thursday.
The petition called “for the creation of a dedicated fund to ensure all unpaid interns who work in council members’ offices could be paid a living wage of $32 an hour,” City & State reported in its newsletter, Heard About Town.
The city’s hourly minimum wage is about half of that at $17 – though lefty council members earlier this year proposed increasing it to $30 an hour.
Farahmand, a New York University graduate, according to her LinkedIn, said she had also confronted Menin at a Youth Civic Summit on Monday to ask her to back the salaries, the outlet reported.
A top staffer in Epstein’s office then informed her later this week that her “volunteer” position was over, even though she was supposed to work in the office through July, she claimed.
The union that represents council workers said in a statement it wanted a “fair and thorough review of the situation.”
“We are concerned by reports that NYC Council intern Mina Farahmand was terminated from Council Member Harvey Epstein’s office after publicly advocating for increased funding and improved conditions for interns,” the executive board of the Association of Legislative Employees.
“Everyone should be able to speak up and advocates for themselves without fear of retaliation.”
Menin’s office said in a statement to The Post Friday it “was already reviewing policies for internships within Council Member offices, and those conversations are ongoing.”
Decisions about hiring and letting go of interns are made at the discretion of individual council members, a source noted.
Farahmand shared a screengrab of the City & State item on X and added in a comment that while the Council’s “caucus interns” are paid that hourly sum, the legislative ones are not.
Farahmand and Epstein’s office did not return messages seeking comment.